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breaking news

Winter storm: More than 200K without power

About 220,000 Georgia utility customers are without power Tuesday morning as falling trees caused by the winter storm snapped power lines faster than crews could restore electricity.

Georgia Power, the state’s largest utility, reported more than 92,000 customers were without power at 4:45 a.m., but that number had fallen to 89,000 customer outages as of 5:45 a.m., according to its outage map. Separately, Georgia’s Electrical Membership Cooperatives, the trade organization for the state’s EMCs, reported about 134,000 customers without power about 5 a.m.

As of 5:45 a.m., about 220,000 customers are without power.

The bulk of the outages for both Georgia Power and the EMCs appear to be in Northeast Georgia, largely along the I-85 corridor and points north.

Lawrenceville, Suwanee, Gainesville, Lula and Cornelia all showed high numbers of outages on the Georgia Power map. Jackson EMC reported its heaviest numbers of outages in Hall, Jackson and Gwinnett counties. The Ga. 316 corridor to Athens and further to the east also showed many outages, with thousands without power in Barrow, Banks, Clarke and Madison counties.

In a news release, the EMCs reported that much of its issues have been with fallen trees affected by ice. Thousands of EMC customers have had their power restored, but tree damage has caused the number of outages to spike. Much of the heaviest accumulation of ice and damage to the power infrastructure has been in Banks, Cherokee, Dawson, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Hall, Jackson, Lumpkin, Pickens and Towns counties, the EMCs said.